We’ve been working on our salt water aquarium again this week. I’ve written about my adventures with the salt water aquarium previously where it way my fault the fish died. Well about two weeks ago, I got another infection of “salt water ick” that killed all of our fish again. Not my fault this time though, the water was perfect. Fortunately all of the corals, shrimps and other “creatures” survived. We also stopped buying expensive fish, so it wasn’t a big financial lose. My clown fish died though…hated that, they are my favorites. I’ve been doing a bunch of reading and research on salt water aquariums, so I feel like I have a much better understanding of the cause and how to avoid the problems in the future. We added some additional corals this week along with a few snails and a cheap little blue damsel fish to test the waters per say. Assuming it does okay, we’ll starting adding a few more over time.

There has been a great deal of buzz amoungst various personal finance bloggers lately around the concept of Gazelle Intense, myself included. As a result, I’ve found myself musing on it a bit lately: What it means exactly, would I be considered gazelle intense, and frankly wondering if those that claim to be gazelle intense truly are. There are a number of factors that I think play into how gazelle intense you can be: Whether you have children and how many you have, how much “spare” cash you have available to snowflake against your debt, your income level, and I am sure many other factors. Another factor to consider is at what point are you maybe hurting yourself or others in the process.

This article is dedicated to my Dad who has always been there for me. Dad, thanks for your stories. I know I didn’t always appreciate them, but I do now. I am passing them onto my children who I hope will appreciate them and one day pass them on to their children.

The Mighty Bargain Hunter posted an update on how his 2008 goals were going. He says it’s a “tepid start at best“, but I think he’s doing great. While he hasn’t fully met his goals, he’s recognized he has some work to do which is important. He’s heading in in the right direction. Also in his update, he decided to “pick on me” and see how I’m doing on my 2008 goal. Seems we both are off to a “tepid start at best“.

One of the things my wife and I have been trying to do a little more lately is taking advantage of points programs. Points programs provide you with points for doing various things. These points can then be used like cash to purchase items, receive gift cards, and give to charity. We’ve been primarily using two programs, but are on the prowl for others:

I’ve mentioned before that Mercy Me is my favorite Christian band, so I thought I would share another of my favorite songs with you. I can really relate to this song, as sometimes I when I’m praying, I’m just not sure what to ask for or how to say it. Sometimes it’s best to just be quiet, and let God speak what he knows is in our heart.

Here is a video so you can hear it, and here are the lyrics to Word of God Speak from Mercy Me’s hit album, Spoken For:

I’ve closed down the poll for how you pronounce glblguy. It was very interesting to see the results, and even after my fellow M-Networkers attempts to “skew” the poll, “Global Guy” won, catching 40% of the vote. “Gibble” was next, followed by “Gullible Guy”, which to be honest, I’m glad didn’t win ;-) So thanks for voting.

I’ve put up a new poll about budgeting and would encourage you to vote. I’ve been searching for the right budgeting tool for myself and would be interested in seeing what you guys are using. If you haven’t heard of these products, you can click on the affiliate links a little below the survey over in the sidebar and check them out.

I’ve been debating writing this article for a few days now. Confession time: for the past 2 months I have not been practicing what I preach. I’ve been wanting to share this with you: my readers, my friends, my accountability partners but to be honest though, I was afraid that you would be disappointed with me and might stop reading or subscribing to my blog. So I kept pushing it to the back burner.

Yesterday, I paid the price for my laziness and inability to admit I screwed up and decided it was time to own up. Let me explain…